AASHTO Journal - AASHTO Issues 46th Edition of its Materials Book

The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials recently issued the 46th edition of its “Standard Specifications for Transportation Materials and Methods of Sampling and Testing, and AASHTO Provisional Standards” publication, more commonly referred to as its “Materials Book.”

[Above image by AASHTO]

The Materials Book contains specifications, recommended practices, and test methods commonly used in the construction of highway infrastructure, with provisional standards included to allow practitioners to use the standards early in the research or development phase.

This 2026 edition of the Materials Book contains a total of 596 standards and includes 15 new and 114 revised standards, AASHTO said.

In addition to revisions to harmonize industry standards, update technology, and improve the standards in all areas of materials and pavements, AASHTO said the 46th edition of its Materials Book also includes several conversions of standards to dual units, as well as the following major updates:

For the quality management system for construction materials testing laboratories, many updates are included to improve work performance.
In asphalt concrete for balanced mix design or BMD, a new tiered framework for specifying asphalt mixtures has been established.
In hydraulic cement, the allowable use of pozzolans and other supplementary cementitious materials has been increased.
In liquid asphalt, there is a new test method for analyzing recycled engine oil bottoms called REOB.
In concrete, the results of research by the National Cooperative Highway Research Program and the Federal Highway Administration’s Turner-Fairbanks Highway Research Center are incorporated into the alkali–silica reactivity or ASR standards, along with updates to resistivity standards.

AASHTO said the 46th edition of its Materials Book comes as a three-volume, PDF download for purchase either with a single-user license or in a multi-user license package – two-user, three-user, five-user, 10-user, or 25-user – that offer increasingly deeper price discounts per user.

To order a copy of the new Materials Book, visit the online AASHTO Store and search via the publication’s item code HM-46 or visit the book’s webpage directly by clicking here.